US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead.
The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions against Trump that were withdrawn following Trump’s White House win in November last year.
At issue now is the fate of a two-volume report that Smith and his team had prepared about their twin investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
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The justice department had been expected to make the document public in the final days of US President Joe Biden’s administration, but the Trump-appointed judge who presided over the classified documents case granted a defense request to at least temporarily halt its release.
Two of Trump’s codefendants in that case, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, had said that the release of the report would be unfairly prejudicial, an argument that the Trump legal team joined in.
The department responded by saying that it would withhold from public release the classified documents volume as long as criminal proceedings against Nauta and De Oliveira remain pending. Although US District Judge Aileen Cannon had dismissed the case in July last year, a Smith team appeal of that decision related to the two codefendants remained pending.
Prosecutors said they intended to proceed with the release of the election interference volume.
In an emergency motion late on Friday, they asked the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals to swiftly lift an injunction from Cannon that had barred them from releasing any portion of the report. They separately told Cannon on Saturday that she had no authority to halt the release of the report, but she responded with an order directing prosecutors to file an additional brief by yesterday.
The appeals court on Thursday night denied an emergency defense bid to block the release of the election interference report, which covers Trump’s efforts before the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, to undo the results of the 2020 election. The court left in place Cannon’s injunction that said none of the findings could be released until three days after the matter was resolved by the appeals court.
The justice department told the appeals court in its emergency motion that Cannon’s order was “plainly erroneous.”
“The Attorney General is the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice and is vested with the authority to supervise all officers and employees of the Department,” the justice department said. “The Attorney General thus has authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.”
Justice department regulations call for special counsels to produce reports at the conclusion of their work, and it is customary for such documents to be made public no matter the subject.
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